It will decompress the file, and start a graphical installation screen. We may get an error about & unexpected. In that case, we have to change the shell used to #!/bin/bash in ./11.1_173_modelsim_ase_linux/setup. Then you can run that file again.

We click on Next >, we click on I agree to the terms and click Next > again, the installation directory should be ~/opt/altera/11.1 and Next >. We select all the components in the list, and Next >, Finally Next >. It'll begin copying files and finishes with a message, we click on OK and then Finish.

Downloading and simulating Zet

First download the source for the latest version from the main page. Let's say we take the .tar.bz2 version. Let's place it under the ~/Downloads directory.

We need to have a working BIOS for simulation. We are going to use a stub test as a BIOS. To do that: cd zet-1.2.0/cores/zet/tests; make 00_stub.rtlrom; cd ~ and it will assemble the test and place it under the simulation folder.

Everything is ready now, so we can launch Modelsim by executing: ~/opt/altera/11.1/modelsim_ase/linux/vsim. If you get an error, it may be because you are running it under x86_64 and you probably need to install the ia32-libs package

Now a graphic screen will appear. We can close the welcome dialog. Now to start the simulation, we enter the following commands inside the Transcript window in Modelsim:

cd ~/zet-1.2.0/cores/zet/sim
do t.do

And if everything goes well, you will have a 10us simulation showing the program behaviour.

Notes

To be able to run it from the graphical desktop such as Gnome without opening a terminal, we can create a script like this and place it under /home/user/bin/sim-zet:

And make this scrip executable: chmod 755 /home/user/bin/sim-zet. Now we can create a custom panel launcher with an icon. When clicking the icon, Modelsim will launch automatically inside the Zet simulation folder, so only a do t.do is needed :)